I visited Karina in the
pasture and this time she wasn't really happy to see me. Something
must have changed in the herd hierarchy or Karina is just going to be
soon in heat, and that was the cause of her dislike to being touched.
I worked later on that and I set our two-headed herd hierarchy back
in place, but at first it wasn't nice as she was pinning her ears
back at me. Leading and changing directions even while grazing seems
to work well when it comes to setting the hierarchy right. Karina
understood that really quickly and she soon was grazing keeping her
distance from me and holding her ears nice and relaxed.
Our ST training again was
short and I admit that after that I was pretty confused. I'm not sure
what I should do next, but maybe some idea will occur to me before I
go to the stable next time. I worked with Karina this time with her
stable halter, I didn't even use the rope one, and it seems to be
working as well now. She just understands now what I want and she
offers me that. I started to work on lateral bending and I'm not
entirely sure if it worked just as it should. I placed Karina near
the wall to prevent her from falling out on her outside hind leg. She
bent in the neck easily, but I failed to observe if her inner hip
came a little forward. That is very important, because, as I have
mentioned in some previous posts, this would mean that she is ready
to move on to work in walk. But now that I think of it, it seems to
me that she is ready and that in a standstill we have no more to do
and should be moving forward. Even though she may be falling out on
her outside hind leg at first (and I'm pretty sure that it is what will
happen). I think that a support from a wall might be a great help at
first.
It may be that I don't
have enough faith in Karina's abilities, but she is progressing in
the ST far quicker than I imagined. Maybe I do her an injustice,
because from the beginning I knew that she was learning fast - too
fast sometimes and she gets bored easily. Most of the times one, two
repetitions of an exercise are more than enough. While working with
Karina, it is very important to have a lots of ideas and to be a
little ahead of her all the time, because otherwise she'll take the
control. Everybody who has worked with her and ignored my advices,
soon told me, that this horse is a monster, a hopeless case, and that
they have never seen a horse so mean and bad-behaving. And poor
Karina just felt offended that somebody thought her to be an imbecile
who needs thousands of repetitions. Yes, yes, that is no mistake -
she is unbelievably ambitious and proud of her brains. And that is,
as I have noticed many a time, entirely justified - she is a
wonder horse in any way...
But anyway, the ST is in
the beginning a mostly physical thing (though relaxation in the body
causes relaxation in the mind) and that's why I needed Karina to
repeat it so many times. I broke the exercises into parts to keep her
interest in this work and at the same time I challenged her a little
with teaching her some simple horse tricks. Because if she would get
bored, nothing on Earth, not even a carrot, would make her do that
again. And having considered all that, I think it is time to move on
to work in walk...
As to the horse tricks, I
changed the method a little and it seems to work not so well. Perhaps
I would have done best by keeping to the previous one. Anyway, that
is easily repaired I think...
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